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Odoital writes "January 2010 is an exciting month for x86 assembly language developers. Software developer Andreas Grech, better known to the x86 assembly language community and the rest of the world by his handle "japheth," has released another version of JWASM — a steadily growing fork of the Open Watcom (WASM) assembler. The main benefit of JWASM, arguably, is the nearly full support of Microsoft's Macro Assembler (MASM) syntax. As those in the assembly language community may already know, Microsoft's desire to continually support the development of MASM has been dwindling over the years — if only measurable by a decreasing lack of interest, updates and bug fixes — and thus the future of MASM remains uncertain. While Intel-style syntax x86 assemblers such as NASM have been around for a while, JWASM opens up a new possibility to those familiar with MASM-style syntax to develop in the domains (i.e. other than Windows) in which assemblers such as NASM currently thrive. JWASM is a welcomed tool that supplements the entire x86 assembly language community and will hopefully, in time, generate new low-level interests and solutions."